The book by the typical statistician-Populist V. S. Prugavin, "The Trades of Vladimir Province," Issue IV, Lenin mentions in his work repeatedly, carefully analyzing the factual material and subjecting its Populist prejudices to sharp criticism.

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THE TRADES OF VLADIMIR PROVINCE.—
ISSUE IV. A STUDY BY V. S. PRUGAVIN.—
MOSCOW 1882

**Paper-weaving and craft**

In the direction of the carpentry district, the village of Gorodishche appears as the last settlement of a purely "factory" character. In this village there are as yet no carpenters; the peasants "cannot even repair a hut properly." In the more distant village of Molodina, already half the peasants are engaged in carpentry; the rest are weavers. There are two small workshops here. In the village of Domashneva, lying to the northwest of the settlement of Markov, we encounter only a single factory owner. Further from these settlements to the north and northwest begins already the region of pure carpentry...

**NB NB
Division of labor
by districts**

In the sphere of the paper-weaving craft in Pokrovsky district we see all manner of forms of industrial units, beginning with the cottage craft workshop and ending with large power-loom factories. All these forms can be divided into the following groups:

1. Cottage craft workshops. They are of two kinds:

a) Cottage craft workshops where exclusively family weavers work.

b) Cottage craft workshops where, together with family weavers, outside workers also labor.

2. Lofts (svetelki). Their 2 categories:

a) Lofts whose owners do not engage in distributing warps: they are only "loft-keepers"—and nothing more.

b) Lofts whose proprietors are, at the same time, also master contractors: they themselves bring warps and distribute them.

| | Establishments | Workers |
|---|---|---|
| | 3,400 | 4,903 |
| | 149 | 1,080 |

| | Establishments | Workers |
|---|---|---|
| | 3,200 | |
| | 3,565 | 9,780 |
| Without item 4 | 3,561 | 6,580 |
| | 3,400 | 4,903 |
| | 161 | 1,327*) |

3. Large lofts—large hand factories having more than 20 looms and belonging to independent factory owners.

4. Power-loom factories.

At the present time the predominant type of industrial-productive units here is the small, craft-bearing form of production—namely the peasant cottage. The number of these in Pokrovsky district equals 3,400, and the quantity of weavers working in them during 1881 was 4,903 persons. The second category of industrial units comprises the lofts. In quantitative terms they occupy the second place in the paper district we are examining. The number of all lofts up to 20 looms equals 149; they contain 1,721 looms, of which during 1881 1,080 looms were in operation.

Large lofts of the third category number 12 in the district with 597 looms, at which 280 weavers worked in 1881.

There are four power-loom factories in the district, a fifth is being built. The total number of weavers working in power-loom factories equals approximately 3,200 persons.

*) Including 258 family—1,069 hired. Total 161 lofts (p. 33—161 lofts) with 1,677 looms, with 1,360 workers (1,327 workers—p. 33).

**NB cf. p. 51:
1881—a very un-
favorable year**

**"Index"
1879**

1) 8,946 persons
2) 2,000

... In the entire Kudykina volost we counted a total of only 70 houses (i.e., only 6% of their total number) from which peasants went away to work elsewhere, and only 43 houses, i.e., 3.7%, from which they went specifically to factories and plants.

This fact is all the more remarkable inasmuch as in Kudykina volost itself are located the famous Morozov factories: the Nikolskaya manufactory and the factory of V. E. Morozov. At the first live up to 17–18 thousand workers*), at the second—about 5,000 persons²).

TRADES OF VLADIMIR PROVINCE, ISSUE IV

In any case, in a week a weaver produces on average 3 pieces of karusets, of 64–65 arshins each. For each piece he receives on average 1 ruble 10 kopecks, i.e., his monthly earnings equal 13 rubles 20 kopecks, and for ten months of the craft year—132 rubles. Of this he expends:

For the bobbin-winder: 18 r.
For light and other expenses: 4 r.
Total: 22 r.

T. S. Morozov is considered the most "strict factory owner." His office takes fines most frequently, aiming to obtain the best goods, and it pays the weavers considerably more for their work than the other, less strict factory owners; sometimes this difference reaches 3/4 kopeck and even a whole kopeck per arshina of finished goods. Owing to such strict treatment of the weaver's work, only the most experienced and skillful weavers ordinarily work for T. S. Morozov, who are comparatively rarely subjected to fines...

... But we have not yet mentioned one circumstance that plays far from a secondary role in the matter of establishing wages. I mean here the competition between factory owners, the result of which is ordinarily a comparatively higher wage...

... Being monopolists in the sphere of distributing paper yarn to the craftspeople, the aforementioned offices obtain the possibility of holding the entire locality, the entire mass of local craftspeople, in the most complete dependence upon themselves.

The result of such dependence, gradually assuming a debt-bondage character, are the following consequences:

1. Low wages. Thus, this year the cutting of a karuset of 58 arshins, into which 8¼ pounds of wool were beaten, was paid here at 70 kopecks, whereas in Kudykina volost for cutting 64-arsh. pieces they paid 80 kopecks...

...2. Terrible dearness of provisions in the office, from which master contractors and weavers are obliged to purchase.

Consequently, 120 pieces per year

**NB**

**NB**

Lenin collection

**NB**

Between the factory owner and the local tavern-keeper there is ordinarily established complete solidarity...

Generally the so-called truck-system* is practiced here on the most extensive scale.

3. High and frequent fines...

**NB**

... Uncontrolled collection of fines serves as a source of crying abuses. In periods critical for industry, such as the present one, the factory owner constantly fines the weavers, no matter how well the goods are made. They have nothing to restrain them—they tell the worker directly: "Work if you want, if not, don't! It's all the same to us: look how many of your kind hang about looking for work. Fed up with you, you confounded lot!"...

... Distributing all the lofts that worked during 1881 into groups according to the composition of their labor force in each, we obtain the following data:

Per loft 3.3
2 + 5.8 = 8
14.

Total 141 lofts,
1,327 workers

1) All lofts in which exclusively family workers labored numbered: 17
2) Lofts with family and outside workers: 80
3) Lofts exclusively with outside workers: 44

All family workers in them: 258
In them family workers: 258
In them outside workers: —
Total outside workers: 1,069

From this it is evident that the predominant form of production is the lofts in which, alongside outside weavers, members of the proprietor's family also work. Such lofts comprise 57% of the total

Truck-system—payment of workers' wages in goods from factory shops belonging to the factory owners; proprietors compelled workers instead of monetary wages to take in these shops necessary articles of consumption, of poor quality and at high prices; this system of wage payment in goods flourished particularly in Russia in rural localities, in districts of craft trades. —Ed.

TRADES OF VLADIMIR PROVINCE, ISSUE IV

number of them; on average for each such loft there fall 2.5 family workers and 5.5 outside workers. Next in numbers come lofts with exclusively outside workers. Such lofts comprise 31% of the total number of working small factories; each loft has 14.1 workers on average. Finally, lofts in which exclusively family weavers worked number only 17, i.e., 12%; each loft has 3.3 workers on average. The total number of family workers in all lofts equals 258, and outside workers—1,069, i.e., outside workers comprise 80%, and family workers—20% of the total number of workers.

Proceeding further with the grouping of all lofts by the total number of workers in each of them, we obtain the following table:

| No. | Name of volosts | Number of lofts having | Total lofts | Total looms |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | 1–5 | 6–10 | 11–15 | 16–20 | More | |
| 1. | Kudykina volost | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 2. | Former Yakovlevskaya volost | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 3. | Korovaevskaya volost | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 4. | Pokrovo-Slobodskaya volost | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 5. | Zharovskaya volost | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 6. | Barbovskaya volost | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 7. | Lipinskaya volost | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 8. | Dubkovskaya volost | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 9. | Zavalinskaya volost | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 10. | Zherdeevskaya volost | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 11. | Funiko-Gorskaya volost | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 12. | Anninskaya volost | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| | **Total** | | | | | | | **2,318** |

... in Pokrovsky district the weaving lofts, beginning with insignificant sizes of 6–10 looms, reach the magnitude of large factories of 60–100 looms. Although small lofts are in essence no different from large hand factories...

... the average magnitude of a worker's working day here amounts to 16–17 hours, of which two hours should be deducted for lunch and breakfast.

... Stuffy and stagnant air, semi-darkness, yellow and emaciated faces, as if convulsively striking with the beater... There is no regulation whatsoever in the matter of establishing the magnitude of the working day and the like here...

Let us now calculate the average income of an independent small factory owner from one cutting.

In the cutting of a karuset measuring 64–65 arshins... the cost of raw material for the cutting... 6 r. 95 k.

The work of the cutting will cost:

1. Unwinding the cutting: 10 kopecks
2. Warping: — »
3. Dyeing: — »
4. For work: 1 r. 10 »
   1 r. 50 k.

The entire cost of production of one cutting will equal 8 r. 45 k. With delivery and the like it will cost 9 rubles.

Assuming the cost of an arshina of such a karuset on average at 15 kopecks, we find that from one piece the independent weaver receives 9 r. 60 k. — 9 rubles, i.e., 60 kopecks profit.

v = 1.80 (0.40 unwinding, dye, warping) v = 15.6
(1.10 weaving)
m = 0.60 m = 6.4
c = 7.30 c = 78.3
9.60 109%

The number of all independent factory owners in Pokrovsky district equaled in 1881 71...

... The above-mentioned number of independent factory owners refers only to 1881, one of the most unfavorable years for the flourishing of paper weaving...

The general quantity of looms at the disposal of small independent factory owners equals 370. Annually 17,300 pieces of paper cloth are produced on them, which comprises only 6% of the total quantity of paper goods produced by craftspeople in Pokrovsky district.

370:6 = 6,166

Ergo "craftspeople" produce about 288,333 pieces: 6 thousand craftspeople—about 45 pieces per person
280 thousand × ? = 1,960 thousand rubles
× 7 = 1,950 thousand rubles, 250 thousand pieces × 10 rubles = = 2,500 thousand rubles.
Assume П = 2 million rubles.

... In periods critical for industry, during crises, from which the craftweaver suffers so much, the only salvation for him is the land. Craft and agriculture go hand in hand, conditioning the development and flourishing of one another.

Cf. in the tables two examples of hiring agricultural workers by loft-keepers, pp. 52–53 of tables and pp. 58–59

? 60–61?

... One of the most distinctive and at the same time sympathetic traits of the local schismatics here is their striving for light, for enlightenment. Old Believer scribes possess enormous erudition... One cannot fail to express here a wish that, on the one hand, all manner of persecution of these peaceful progressivists from among the peasants be ceased, and on the other—that the government come to the aid of the local population...

Deliver us, Lord,
from such "helpers"!

63:

Well, of course!

Generally loft-keepers and especially more or less large factory owners constitute here a layer of a kind of "cultured people," rather sharply set apart from the rest of the population... Having separated themselves, thanks to crude profit-making and exploitation, from the mass of peasant population, they serve for the latter as an object of enmity, mockery and malice... the real cultured people—the nobility and the bureaucracy...

... up to now factory owners prefer to work sarpinoch and similar cloth on hand looms rather than on power looms. One of the chief reasons for this fact is the extremely low price of labor, with which the craftweaver is content...

From this we see that it is not only technical reasons that sustain hand weaving. Generally the extremely trifling wage, with which weavers working paper cloth in their villages on hand looms are content, serves as one of the major obstacles to the development of power-loom factory production.

Commodity production, reckless pursuit of markets in order to fill them with one's products, intensification of speculation, gradual process of depriving the working masses, rapidly growing competition of capitals, crises with their hunger and pauperism—these are the phenomena which characterize the craft trade and point to extensive development in it of capitalist elements.

Surely capitalist accumulation has not
intensified during the general misery?
...characteristic conclusion for 1881
(not after March 1, 1881?)

* N.—he is a pseudonym of one of the prominent liberal Populists—N. Danielson. —Ed.

... establishment of raw material and goods storage facilities and associations, in general providing the craftsman with the possibility of obtaining raw materials and disposing of finished goods independently... providing weavers-craftspeople with the possibility of using the power of steam, electricity, etc. to set in motion weaving looms in craft cottages and lofts.

... One of the most desirable and useful measures of this kind would be the providing to the weaver-producers of the right to have a known share of profits from the total income which the factory yields. The ultimate aims and tasks of social-state activity in the sphere of factory economy should serve: on the one hand, the purchase for the benefit of the state of all instruments of labor and providing the latter to the people for temporary rental use*; on the other—the establishment of such an organization of the conditions of production, which would be founded on the needs of the people and the state, and not on the interests of the market, profit and competition, which is the case with the commodity-capitalist organization of the economic forces of the country.

Generally the village of Sanino represents an exceptional phenomenon in terms of its intellectual and moral development. The reasons for this fact... are hidden chiefly in... favorable conditions of economic life... the village of Sanino serves as a kind of indication of the path by which should be resolved... questions, on account of which all manner of measures and projects are currently being devised in the quiet of the studies of "well-fed people"...

Give the craftspeople decent craft earnings, do not hinder the harmonious development in them of personality and communal life, and the luxuriant flourishing of mighty spiritual powers, latent in the people, will not keep waiting long for itself...

!!ha-ha-ha!
sic!!
sic!!
Some kind of
romantic petty-
bourgeois
Staatssozialis-
mus!*

*) ?!
sic!!

*) ? The village of Sanino in Argun volost = center of carpentry = seasonal work generally that has raised cultural level, see 161, 166, 167 etc. Of 31 spoon-makers 23 are carpenters.

state socialism. —Ed.
Lenin collection xxxiii

**NB**

III.

1)
2)
3)

**Carpentry and Its Significance in Folk Life**

... It is not rare for a contractor to amass in 10 years 50–60 thousand rubles and more of clear profit. Some contractors have 300–500 carpenters and have become real capitalists. They have houses in Moscow worth 70–80 thousand rubles and capital of 500 thousand rubles and more. Such contractors ordinarily finally abandon their homes in the village and relocate to Moscow. It is not for nothing that the local peasants say that "there is no more profitable trade than dealing in carpenters." The "native" contractors have been engaged in their craft for more than 50 years.

Carpentry has left a deep imprint on the entire character of the folk life here. Without entering into detailed examination of this question, I will underscore only some of its most important aspects. Carpentry disturbs the peasant's connection with his home and hearth. Living for many years in the capital, the peasant gradually cools both to his family and to the land. From this arises and develops the greater or lesser sexual freedom noted everywhere in the carpentry district. The demoralizing influence of carpentry on the family life of the local peasants is beyond question. Further, the peasant-carpenter gradually forgets agriculture and subsequently abandons it altogether—he ceases to be a tiller of the soil. Owing to this, in purely carpentry volosts agriculture is engaged in exclusively only by persons of the female sex. Here a type of woman-peasant-farmer has developed...

Constant contact with Moscow occasions and conditions the appearance of various cultural beginnings and habits among the local peasantry...

Agricultural workers
p. 24